


Once the Dust Settles

by Misty_Floros



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24536836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misty_Floros/pseuds/Misty_Floros
Summary: Freedom awaits Enjolras in death, and he doesn't know what to do with it. More than one kind of reconciliation takes place.
Relationships: Enjolras & Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Once the Dust Settles

**Author's Note:**

> This is an edit of an old fic of mine. I posted it before under a different name, so on the off chance that somebody read that and finds this familiar, that's why.

Enjolras awoke to silence and a grey sky. He remained where he was for a long while – unmoving on his back in the hard grass, breathing slowly and watching the one seamless cloud which filled his vision. It was a grey so light it approached white.

One of the surprising things was that day didn’t stop changing into night. As he was later walking aimlessly across a meadow, he noticed the sky darkening. He was tired, and as there were no buildings nearby, he headed into the forest to lie down, maple trees providing cover from potential rain with their wide leaves. He removed his coat to place it on the ground and lay on it, finding it strange he didn’t feel cold. He didn’t feel many things on the whole.

* * *

In the morning the sound of rain and a few stray raindrops made him open his eyes. He sat at the edge of the woods and watched the landscape blurred by rain.

After a few hours which seemed endless, the sky cleared and only a few small heaps dotted it here and there. He continued across the meadows in the direction in which his limbs had taken him the day before. It rained once more when dawn neared, a brief downpour whose dissipating clouds were set ablaze by the Sun, barely above the horizon.

The next day, he opted not to go anywhere – for the idea seemed foolish to him all of sudden. Why walk when he didn’t know where? He didn’t feel any mysterious force steering him in the right direction, showing him the way towards the light. There was only he, roaming without purpose.

Days passed and Enjolras wandered through forests and meadows, finding paths which slowly disappeared, a false hope every time. He met nobody, and trails trodden in the undergrowth were the only signs of a chance of other people’s existence. There weren’t even many animals. He saw altogether one frightened hare and a fleeing deer. He’d forgotten his coat at one of the places at which he’d slept, and when he’d returned for it, it hadn’t been there anymore. He reckoned it didn’t matter, seeing as he had no need of it anyway.

While he’d been alive, he’d never thought to simply sit and admire the sunset. Here, he had no choice but let it enrapture him. The world was always quiet and lonely, but it was when the Sun painted the world orange and pink that he felt the full impact of it. One evening the sky was covered with a thin veil, and when the Sun neared the horizon, phantom flames spreading out from under the ground lit the clouds. He didn’t know what caused it, but it was long after the world had turned black that he finally stopped crying like a child and looked up again. The stars shone, so tiny, so far away. He didn’t feel sleep would come easily, so he walked through the night instead, not knowing where it was he was heading.

* * *

He was roaming around a forest composed mainly of spruces. The trees were tall and old, some of them lacking needles – dry, grey spectres. The Sun was hung high in the sky. As he hadn’t come across any pathways, he just walked between the trees, pushing branches out of the way. He had been doing so since the morning.

He wished he could forget the existence of time; that his mind would stop showing him a big hourglass where the grains of sand dropped one by one, so slowly; and when there was no sand left in the top half, it turned upside down, the entire process useless. But the Sun always reminded him of how much time there was left until he could go to sleep again. He’d had to sit down a couple of times when his chest felt so tight he could barely breathe. He tried to keep words like eternity, nothingness and pointlessness at bay.

He had absolute liberty, and he didn’t have the slightest inkling of what to do with it.

* * *

The Sun had passed the zenith and was slowly declining. He’d been ascending the whole day, and when he arrived at the top of a mountain whose surface was covered only by dwarf pines and undergrowth, a vast plateau opened in front of him. He began crossing it and glimpsed a dark spot near what looked like a rocky edge cutting the plateau on one side. The spot had the appearance of a seated figure, but Enjolras knew it could be simply a peculiarly shaped stone or a tree. Despite his will, his hope grew as he approached it.

The figure must have heard his steps, because they turned and upon seeing him rose from their sitting position and started to walk towards him uncertainly.

Enjolras took his steps carefully, afraid the person was a figment of his desperate imagination, about to disintegrate at any abrupt movement. And he knew that figure; he knew that slouched stance and unkempt hair, the unsmoothed clothes.

Neither of them spoke at first.

“I can’t say I didn’t expect such an apparition,” Grantaire spoke then, sounding like he hadn’t used his voice in a very long time. His face was pale and his eyes sunken. Enjolras didn’t see any artificial, alcohol-induced mirth in them.

“I’m hardly an apparition. This could very well be an illusion of my own.”

“Oh, is this the game we’re playing? Come sit over there, Enjolras. The view is quite pleasant.”

Grantaire beckoned for Enjolras to sit beside him where the even surface of the plateau gave way to sharp rocks covered in moss. The spot offered a view of a vast landscape painted with forests composed of dark, sombre conifers and flamboyant deciduous trees, alive with a myriad of colours. There were a few golden meadows which attracted the eye, and patches of wind-fallen trees.

Enjolras noted there was neither stench of wine about Grantaire nor a bottle in sight. Apparently, death didn’t provide alcohol just as it didn’t provide most Earthly sufferings.

Enjolras was so relieved at not being alone anymore that he didn’t linger on the thought that Grantaire was hardly the company he’d have chosen for himself. Perhaps fate was showing him kindness by letting him meet the one person from whom he so desperately needed an explanation and for whose fate he felt such responsibility. It would be cruel if this turned out to be a mere trick of his mind.

“It isn’t an easy situation we’re in, is it? There’s no way I can be sure I haven’t simply imagined you,” Grantaire said as if reading his mind. “I can’t trust you telling me it’s truly you, when that is exactly what I wish you said. After all, I’m well aware this whole thing could be happening in my mind.”

“If this is in your mind, it’s in mine as well. Perhaps it’s a dream we’re sharing, or only my imagination has granted me a reprieve after so many days of loneliness. But I’d like to believe we really meet again, even after death has left us at different places of her realm.”

“I hope it truly is that simple,” said Grantaire.

Enjolras wanted to ask so many things, but he could hardly express them in words. He just looked at the world below them.

* * *

When Enjolras woke up the next morning, Grantaire was still asleep. But he was there and seemed to be, as far as Enjolras’ senses could detect, real.

The Sun hadn’t risen yet. They hadn’t left the plateau, feeling there was something extraordinary about it and not wanting to leave so soon. After a moment of indecision, Enjolras walked over to sit at the place where Grantaire and he had relished the view of the landscape yesterday.

The hopelessness was the strongest in the morning, as if it had been building up during his slumber and now was coming to hit him, fresh and fierce.

There was no cause, no greater good to dedicate his days to, and that creeping knowledge sapped away the zeal which had been powering his entire existence.

The Sun rose, giving the broadleaved trees the colours the night had taken.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Grantaire said, coming to sit on Enjolras’ right. “Autumn,” he clarified.

Enjolras offered a tentative smile.

* * *

One day at dusk, they came to an edge of the woods they’d roved for so many days. A vast flat country opened in front of them, with hills visible far away, painted light blue by the haze of distance. There were no trees, only bushes and high grass. A path cut the landscape in the middle, leading in a straight line towards the setting Sun’s right.

It was a stark contrast to what they’d glimpsed from this world thus far. There was no need of choice, no maze and only one possible way to proceed.

They stood there, side by side, until Grantaire suggested, “Let’s continue in the morning, shall we?”

Enjolras agreed and they lay down under the tall larches lining the forest. The ground was uneven, but Enjolras paid it no mind. He’d got used to the fact that his back didn’t hurt no matter where he slept here. There was no pain and no danger. Did it make sense to miss those things?

He stared at the dark canopy stretching above him. He inquired into the silence, “Why did you do it, Grantaire? Why did you choose to die?”

“I wished to stay with you,” Grantaire told him like it was obvious. “If you had to die, then so did I.”

“You could have lived. They would have let you go.”

“Why would I have wanted to live? I was created to admire you, Enjolras.”

Enjolras frowned. “That’s nonsense. You were created to be your own person, not to merely admire another.”

“Don’t tell me who I am. If the only service I was able to provide you with was not to let you die alone, I’m glad I succeeded at least in that.”

“I don’t want anyone to serve me,” Enjolras protested, exasperated. There was no way Grantaire didn’t know that.

“Too bad.”

In the hopes to assuage his own guilt, Enjolras asked quietly, “Are you at least content here?”

“I think I will be. If there’s something I’m certain about, it’s that I’m better at being dead than I ever was at being alive.”

“Didn’t you find it difficult, getting used to this?” Enjolras asked, gesturing around to indicate the world they now inhabited.

Grantaire’s face was drawn. “I don’t want your pity.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Are you meaning to ask how I’m faring without drinking?”

Enjolras shrugged. “Among other things.”

“It’s easier not to drink when you don’t have the possibility. It was to be expected that it would take dying for me to stop.”

At least one of us benefitted from this, Enjolras thought bitterly, but then admonished himself. He looked around and tried to breathe in the peace.

“I asked because it was difficult for me,” he confessed then. It felt like taking a giant step into the unknown that was the self hiding beneath all the convictions he had manufactured in the face of the harshness of the world.

* * *

The landscape was unchanging, days endless and Enjolras remembered how he’d wished to get out of the forests. Now he thought he would gladly return there if it meant the end of this march. Nothing changed – they trod on the same cracked soil, the grass flanking it grew to be still the same height, flowers were still in bloom and hills still far away.

“Can we sit for a moment?” Enjolras said when all the endlessness was beginning to make his head spin.

They sat down beside the path.

“Is something wrong?” asked Grantaire.

Enjolras kept silent for a while and then said, “It’s nothing. I’m only disconcerted by how nothing changes around us, even though we’ve been walking for so many hours.”

Grantaire observed the sky and appeared thoughtful. “When I was here alone, I used to watch the clouds sometimes. They always change. Not very fast most of the time, but they do.”

Enjolras lay on his back, the tall stems of grass and flowers getting smoothed down under his weight, and watched the clouds move. Grantaire lay down beside him, and they remained so for a long time.

The Sun was in the zenith, and only small white low-level clouds dotted the sky. As the gap between the white circle of the Sun and the horizon narrowed, the tufts grew into imposing masses with dark grey bases. Soon, the whole sky became ominously sombre and rivulets of rain drenched their clothes. Enjolras felt the cold of the water, but it didn’t even make him shiver.

“Do you want to continue the journey?” Enjolras asked, for it seemed to him that the sky had been a sort of spectacle they were watching, and now it had reached its finale.

“All right,” said Grantaire and stood up. He held out his hand to help Enjolras to his feet. Enjolras took it – and saw certain irony in the fact that _Grantaire was helping him stand._

They returned to the distressingly neat path and started walking again, rain soaking them through and gathering in puddles on the parched ground.

Once the rain had stopped and the rainclouds were leaving the sky in a rippled rampart, the Sun emerged just above the faint mountain range in the distance. It painted the dissipating clouds soft pink, the colour gradually turning bolder. After the Sun had hidden and stars had begun to show, the horizon turned a fiery orange.

And perhaps it was the beauty of it what finally made Enjolras feel like he was beginning to understand.

* * *

“I’m glad we found each other here,” he told Grantaire as they waded through a meadow of grasses and flowers bearing countless kinds of buzzing insects.

Grantaire glanced at him, astonishment written in his every feature.

“Had I been alone, I think I would have gone mad,” Enjolras elaborated.

“I’ve never thought I’d hear you say such a thing,” Grantaire said, looking at him as if he’d hung the Moon.

Enjolras cracked a smile and felt warm when he said, “You’d better get used to it, then.”

They walked towards the sound of crashing waves and arrived at the edge of a cliff, a deep abyss separating them from the surface of the water. The terrain was inclined at a small angle along the shore, and they followed the slow descent until they found themselves at sea level. Rocks were lining the shore – dark grey and moulded into shapes by the merciless salt water.

They watched the water undulate, and the moment filled them both with peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
